The State and Federal Governments of the ..‪.‬

Dr. Woodrow Wilson’s informative, clear, and organized study of the basic structure and sharing of powers and responsibilities among governmental units in the United States. Includes explanation from interesting history—why townships and not counties? why states and not departments?—while comparing other nations and other eras. Features original index and  bibliography, active links, and a new Foreword by Steven Alan Childress, J.D., Ph.D., a law professor at Tulane.


Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) was, famously, the 28th President of the United States, a wartime Commander-in-Chief, and winner of the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize. Before, he was president of Princeton University and the governor of New Jersey. Less famously, and earlier still, he was a practicing lawyer, an accomplished professor of political science and jurisprudence, and a prolific scholar and popular author. His books on civics, U.S. history, and presidential biography were used in classrooms for years. This book in particular, published in 1889, was a textbook that became the standard for government classes in several different countries, including the U.S., for several decades. It still resonates in recounting the early histories of townships, towns, counties, courts, and states, and their variant structures and pasts—and in taking local and state government seriously, while detailing its purposes and variations across the nation, and not just the more-studied federal government (though certainly the federal government and its executive are summarized as well, before he embodied that office). 

 

It remains an interesting read and a useful resource of a history of the first century of the U.S. and its constitutional framework, and an examination of the institutions and processes of government after Reconstruction and into the Progressive Era. The Constitution’s structures and norms are set out, and the sharing of power with courts and other polities examined. It is a vivid and compelling snapshot of the United States as a federalist system of powerful and proud states and localities—at a time when they were perceived, even after a bloody war to preserve the federal Union, as independent and functional in their own realms, and not some convenient geographic subdivision of a singular nation. Accessible to students or fans of history and government at several levels.


Quality ebook formatting includes active Contents, linked footnotes, and  font size variations the author used to deemphasize subparagraphs